What's Said In Egypt
by ladyoftheknightley
Summary: Whilst on holiday in Egypt, Molly and Arthur have an evening out at a restaurant, leaving their seven children at Bill's flat, where it appears the main topic of conversation will be who's dating whom... Family fun, with hints of my favourite pairing!


_Okay, so this isn't exactly something new: I wrote this for Week 4 of Ollivander's Challenge on tumblr, using prompt #4, the Weasleys' Egyptian vacation and it's been on my tumblr (ladyknightley dot tumblr dot com, for those interested...) for a while now, so if you follow me there, you might have seen it before now. If not...enjoy! I've cleaned up a few very minor grammatical errors, but other than that, it's identical to the previous version._

_As usual, I'm only playing in JKR's sandpit._

* * *

"Is-n ow-uhl."

Ginny, Bill noticed, wrinkled her nose at Ron's speech being obscured by the biscuit he'd given him, but nodded in agreement with her youngest older brother. "There's an owl at the window," she confirmed, managing not to spray biscuit crumbs everywhere. Even though neither of them had raised their voice beyond normal conversation level, Percy shot up from, Bill presumed, Cairo, snatched the letter from the owl, threw it a treat and vanished into the only place one could get privacy in Bill's flat—the airing cupboard—quicker than if he'd apparated.

"What," Bill began, turning away from his saucepan of spaghetti momentarily and facing his younger siblings, "was _that _all about?!"

Ginny giggled. "Percy has a girlfriend."

"He does," Ron confirmed. _I should have known_ thought Bill. Only a girlfriend would write a letter that thick to Percy—even at a distance from the window, he'd been able to tell that the letter was slightly longer than the essays Professor Binns used to ask for in History of Magic, and those weren't exactly short.

"Blimey," he said mildly, stirring the sauce. "Pigs will fly..."

"What's that mean?" Ron asked immediately.

Bill shrugged. It was a Muggle phrase; his ex-girlfriend, Janet, had been Muggleborn and used the phrase often, when he'd done something unexpected (like the washing up). He told Ron so, omitting the latter half of that sentence. "Yes," Ron pressed, "but what does that _mean_?"

"Pigs will fly?" Bill repeated. "I dunno. Just...I don't know, sometimes something completely unexpected happens. Without, you know, magic helping. Like pigs flying, or Percy getting a girlfriend. Why?"

"Hermione says it a lot," he answered, the tips of his ears reddening.

"Who's Hermione?" Bill teased. "Your girlfriend?!"

"No!" exclaimed Ron, at the same time as Charlie and the twins reappeared, carrying a crate which clinked suspiciously.

"Who's got a girlfriend now?" asked the eldest, depositing the crate on the small table.

"Percy!" cried Ginny delightedly.

"Bloody _hell_," said Charlie.

"I'd forgotten about that," said Fred, a wicked glint forming in his eyes.

"Maybe if we—" began George, but Bill cut him off.

"_No_," he said firmly. "You're not to tease him about this. I'm sure she's a perfectly lovely girl."

"She is," Fred said.

"So the question is," added George, "what the hell is she doing with _Percy_?"

"I have an idea," laughed Charlie. Bill frowned at him, nodding at Ron and Ginny.

"Right, I think this is done," he said, gesturing to the spaghetti. "Fred, George, wash your hands then go and fetch Percy. Ron and Ginny, you two carry the plates and cutlery into the next room would you? We'll eat on cushions on the floor because I don't think this table can cope with more than two people sitting at it at once..." Once they'd left, Bill turned to Charlie. "This is so exhausting and Mum and Dad have only been gone an hour," he said.

"I have zero sympathy," Charlie said flatly. "You sent me out with the twins in a foreign city. I most definitely had it worse."

"I only sent you out to get something to drink; it can't have been—beer? Really?!" Bill exclaimed, looking through the contents of the crate that Charlie and the twins had brought back. "What are we going to give Ron and Ginny?!"

"Shandies," Charlie said, pulling a bottle of lemonade out of the bag. "It'll be fine. Ron's nearly as tall as you are, and Gin can have mostly lemonade, but c'mon—Ron's about to start his third year, and Ginny her second. They're not babies any more."

"Ginny certainly isn't," Bill said darkly.

"Have Mum and Dad talked to you about that?" Charlie asked.

"Nope," his brother replied shortly. He caught Charlie's eye as he strained the spaghetti into the sink. "I know. If it was up to me..."

"She seems okay, though," said Charlie. "I mean, she's quiet. But..."

"We'll see," said Bill. He—a cursebreaker with several years' experience—had his own opinions about what the object was that had possessed Ginny. There were very few things capable of doing that, even if Dark Magic was used, but he definitely had his suspicions, even if he couldn't prove them. He suspected that his parents had been rather fobbed off by Professor Dumbledore in his explanations, but that they'd been so thankful for Ginny's safe return at the time that they hadn't pushed things. Charlie, who spent his life working with dragons and hadn't taken DADA beyond OWL level, wouldn't have heard of what he suspected was the issue, and he certainly wasn't going to bring up with him the fact that he thought Ginny had been possessed by a—

"Is it dinner yet?" Ron looked so concerned as he poking his head through the kitchen doorway about the lack of food in the living room that Bill couldn't help but laugh, and, pushing all other thoughts to the back of his mind, carried the cauldron of spaghetti bolognaise into the next room.

The meal passed smoothly enough at first—the seven Weasley siblings sat on the floor on cushions to eat their food, something their mother (had she not been being entertained at a restaurant by their father) would never have approved of—but shortly after finishing, Fred and George both got the gleam in their eye that meant trouble was on the way.

"So Perce," Fred began, "we hear you received a letter today."

"A letter from a certain lady-friend of yours," continued George.

"A lady-friend by the name of Penelope," added Fred.

"Who—" started George, but Percy cut him off.

"I did indeed," he said, taking a sip of his beer. "There's something very lovely about hearing from your girlfriend, particularly if she's as delightful as mine." Bill heard Charlie stifle a snort at Percy's rather pompous tone. "I take it that's something you both can appreciate and understand? From your vast levels of experience?"

"Credit where it's due," Bill mouthed at Charlie, who had switched his expression to a much more impressed one as Percy managed to (momentarily) silence the twins.

"That doesn't explain what she's doing with _you_," Fred said, in a manner that was clearly intended to sting.

"I know," Percy said ruefully, taking him seriously. "I ask myself that every bloody day."

"That's how you know you've got a good one," Bill said drily, and Percy grinned at him. He had seen Penelope's photograph—Percy placed it on whatever surface he was near to every night before he went to sleep—and he had to admit that he was impressed with Percy's pulling skills. The girl was pretty, and by all accounts witty and intelligent and popular to. Quite what she was doing with Percy was another matter, but unlike Fred and George, he thought that voicing _that_ thought aloud would not be the best of ideas.

"So c'mon then," Charlie said, addressing the twins, "how many girls have you two kissed?!"

"I kissed Alicia!" George said triumphantly.

"Yeah, but she decked you one afterwards, and told you never to wave that mistletoe around her again," Fred said.

"Because _you_ did so much better with Angelina, who wouldn't even let you get to the kissing stage," his twin replied.

Fred shrugged, and turned back to Charlie. "What about you and dear old Nymphadora Tonks!?"

"Charlie and Tonks are just friends!" Ron piped up, rather emboldened by his half pint of beer. "Just like me and Hermione."

"Who's Hermione?" Charlie asked, confused.

"My friend," Ron said, as though that explained everything.

"She's muggleborn, and she's the cleverest witch in her year," Ginny contributed. "She's quite nice, but she can be a bit bossy sometimes. And she reads a _lot _of books."

"Even more than Percy," Ron confided. "Me an' Harry like her, but she's annoying sometimes. She doesn't understand Quidditch at all and she won't let me beat her at chess anymore."

"That's 'cause you always gloat when you beat her!" Ginny cried.

"But _she_ always gloats when she gets better marks than us in our homework!" protested Ron. The rest of the Weasleys watched this back and forth between the two siblings as though it was a tennis match.

"But if it wasn't for her, the two of you wouldn't _do _any homework," said Ginny.

Ron considered this for a moment. "That's true," he conceded.

"Wait," Charlie said, cutting in with an amused grin. "This girl makes you do your homework?"

"She's very...organised," Ron said defensively, though it took him a few seconds to find the right word. "Anyway, I need to go to the loo. Back in a sec."

As soon as he'd left the room, Bill and Charlie turned to their younger siblings. "Does he by any chance have a little bit of a crush?" Bill asked, but the twins laughed.

"Way ahead of you," Fred said. "We've got a betting pool going on when they're going to get together. They're always arguing—"

"—but it's basically just sexual tension, even at their age," George added.

"I've got eight sickles on them getting together in their sixth year," Percy said.

"And I've got a Galleon on Christmas of seventh year," said George. "All that mistletoe floating around..."

"I've a Galleon on sometime at the end of seventh year," Fred put in. "Ron's a slow mover."

"Hmm," said Charlie. "Put me down for ten sickles and anytime over the summer holidays between sixth and seventh year."

"Just because that's when you finally hooked up with Tonks," Bill muttered, leaning towards him.

"And your bets?" his brother asked, not even blushing.

"A Galleon on the very last day of their seventh year. Ron's a _very _slow mover," he said. "What about you, Ginny?" he added, turning to his sister. "You've been remarkably quiet."

"Ginny's got ten Galleons on them getting married," George said.

"Oh, c'mon now Ginny," Bill laughed. "They're not going to get _married_..."

"You don't know," Ginny said. "You've never seen them together. They will."

Bill looked around, catching Percy's eye. His younger brother shrugged—though whether he was indicating disbelief at what Ginny was saying, or just her utter stubbornness and refusal to change her opinion, he didn't know. "Alright Gin," he said, trying to humour her, "who else is going to get married?"

"Ginny and Harry Potter," Fred said triumphantly.

Ginny turned scarlet as the others tried, with varying degrees of success, not to laugh—although she didn't deny it, Bill noted. "What's he like, this Harry Potter?" he asked. He had, of course, grown up and gone to school knowing tales of the boy and his achievements—and what some said about him. Only another Dark Lord would be able to vanish a Dark Lord, the rumour went, and whilst Bill never had much truck with gossip, it was a fair point to make. A baby couldn't have vanished Voldemort; there had to be something else at play...

"He's an alright person," Percy said. "He's had a fair few detentions, though not as many as those two, I suppose," he added, with a nod at the twins, who looked proud.

"Why, Perce, that's almost praise," said George.

Percy narrowed his eyes. "He does alright because he and Ron have that Hermione girl to keep them on the straight and narrow," he said, glaring at the twins. "You two could learn from—"

"From the Heir of Slytherin himself? I don't think so!" said Fred.

"From that what now?!" Charlie asked.

"Heir of Slytherin, that's Harry," grinned George. Bill nearly knocked over his empty beer bottle: this did not sound good, not with everything he'd been told about the boy, and Harry shared a dorm with Ron...

"How do you know?" he asked, but before the twins could respond, Ginny piped up.

"He's not the Heir of Slytherin, he's not!" she said, looking startlingly close to tears.

"Who's not what-now?" Ron asked, arriving back from the bathroom.

"We're talking about your friend, Harry," Percy supplied.

"Oh, Harry," Ron said. "Hmm, come to think of it, I haven't heard from him in a while. I hope those muggles he lives with haven't locked him in his room again...though I guess, it could just be because Errol hasn't delivered my letter yet..."

"You used Errol to send a letter back to England?" Percy yelped. "You know you're not supposed to do that! It'll tire him out terribly."

"And then you won't be able to use him to write to Penelope, and what a disaster _that_ will be!" said Ron.

Percy opened his mouth to respond, but hoping to avoid an argument, Bill cut in, asking Ron about Harry. The youngest male Weasley thought for a moment. "Well," he said eventually, "he's a good Seeker. Great, in fact. But he's rubbish at Chess. I always beat him at that. And Hermione says that we should both try harder in school. But that's just Hermione, I suppose."

Bill tried to hide his smile at Ron bringing the conversation back to Hermione again. Charlie's interest had been piqued, however, by Ron mentioning that his friend was a good Seeker. "What does he look like?" he asked.

"Weedy," said Fred promptly, and Percy, George and Ron all nodded.

"It's true," said the latter.

"But he's got nice green eyes," Ginny said, almost dreamily. Fred and George looked as though they were going to tease her for this (whereas Ron just looked revolted), but Bill narrowed his eyes at them. Ginny clearly had a harmless little crush, but it wouldn't do for them to mock her about it. A moment later, however, he regretted his chivalry when Ginny turned to him, all wide eyed innocence, and asked what had happened to his last girlfriend.

"Yeah Bill," Charlie grinned, "whatever happened to Janet?"

"Are you seeing anyone now?" Percy asked, as Bill started—very pointedly, he though—gathering the used plates.

"Can we meet her?" Fred asked.

"We promise to be on our best behaviour," George added.

"Our _very_ best!" Fred repeated.

Bill sighed. All his siblings were now fixated on him and his love life (or lack of it, since Janet had left him...). "If you all don't shut up, I'll lock you in a pyramid tomorrow," he threatened.

"That means he's not getting laid," stage-whispered Charlie.

"What's getting laid?" asked Ron curiously.

Bill groaned. It was still three hours until his parents were due to return. It looked like it was going to be a long night...


End file.
